Since September 1969 the leadership of the group has also allied itself to the ‘global Jihad’ ideology expounded by Osama Bin Laden that has threatened Western interests.

[11] The leader of the Cairo militants was Abbud al-Zumar, "a onetime army intelligence officer serving a life sentence for his part in the plot to kill Sadat".

[13] In the mid-1980s, in Peshawar Pakistan, the militants reconstituted themselves as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, "with very loose ties to their nominal imprisoned leader, Abbud al-Zumar".

A physician by the name of Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif or "Dr. Fadl" was head of EIJ for some time,[14] although eventually, Ayman al-Zawahiri, "whose leadership style was autocratic," would take over.

During this time EIJ became more extreme, with, for example, Dr. Fadl emphasizing the importance of takfir and execution of apostates, which he argued should include those who registered to vote, since this was a violation of God's sovereignty over governance.

[16] One of those who complained of being elbowed aside[17] was a former mentor of bin Laden Abdullah Azzam, the original exponent and organizer of global jihad on behalf of the Afghan mujahideen.

[20] In August 1993, al-Jihad unsuccessfully attempted to kill the Egyptian Interior Minister, Hassan Al Alfi, who was leading a crackdown on Islamic militants.

A bomb-laden motorcycle exploded next to the minister's car, fatally wounding Nazih Nushi Rashed and killing Tarek Abdel-Nabi (Dia al-Deen) instantly.

The minister, protected by his armored car, was not hurt, but the explosion injured 21 people and killed a young schoolgirl, Shayma Abdel-Halim.

The leader of EIJ hoped this would be a temporary measure but later confided to one of this chief assistants that joining with bin Laden had been "the only solution to keeping the Jihad organization abroad alive.

[27] The leader of the plot was "Mustafa Hamza, a senior Egyptian member of the Al-Qaeda and commander to the military branch of the Islamic Group".

[28][29] Their hope was to decapitate the Egyptian government thereby eliminating the "iron grip" of the state security services, and creating a power vacuum which Islamists could then fill.

Back in Egypt, Mubarak launched a ruthless campaign to crush anyone involved in Islamist terrorism,[29] but in Sudan the EIJ had even worse troubles.

Musab went through his father's files and photocopied them for the Egyptians, but the Sudanese intelligence service saw the covert meetings and alerted al-Jihad, recommending that they treat the boys leniently if they confessed.

al-Zawahiri convened a Sharia court, where Musab confessed he had been given explosives by the Egyptians which he was told to detonate at the next Shura council meeting.

[36] In Afghanistan Zawahiri wrote the 1998 fatwa for the "International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," calling for the killing of Americans and their allies, both civilian and military, which was signed by representatives of several jihadi organizations, including EIJ.

[42] Consequently, it is often considered synonymous with al-Qaeda (for example, by the US Treasury Department),[43] although some refer to it as a separate organization with al-Zawahiri as its leader and global jihad's main ideologist.

Egyptian Jihad and the rival armed group launched a wave of violence against Egypt's secular government in 1992, a campaign they only abandoned at the end of the decade.

[46] The al-Zawahiri faction subsequently formed an alliance with Al-Qaeda leading over time to the effective merger of the two groups operations inside Afghanistan.